Good write up.

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Thanks cbird!

The debate about the wearing of any particular garb or uniform, especially of religious sects goes to the heart of any truly secular society and raises profound issues both moral and societal. The starter question probably is do we wish to live in a secular or a diverse society. Answering this question then leads us down two different paths as to how we, inhabiting such a chosen society, might choose to view the wearing of any particular garb or uniform and what it represents in our chosen society.
For the moment, let us assume we wish to live in a secular society, the two societies referred to in your commentary:- France is secular, unlike the UK where the anglican church is involved in government of the state, and the US is secular (Jefferson and Adams were both probably atheists and, as the founding “humans”, avoided the participation of the church or religion in the make-up of the Constitution.
In a secular state, I would argue, in one’s formative years (ie at least during the education period) it would seem appropriate that members of such societies conform to an homogeneity that places no sort of peer pressure on any other member of that society. (Thus at school, even university, there is an argument for either a (neutral) uniform or the prohibition of use of uniform for political or religious reasons. Believe me, having worked a long time in muslim societies, there is definite pressure exerted on the individual, and one would reason this is the precise concept of the wearing of a uniform, burqa or full covering, exercised through this uniform. Not only this but it affects the dynamics of interaction of those surrounding those persons, as any uniform would, and it is highly disconcerting!). In line with this argument probably France banned the burqa in publicly funded schools in 2004. Was this the correct line to take? I think so given the answer to the initial question. (I don’t know the position in US schools and it would be interesting to know).
If the answer to the initial question however is that we want a diverse society where everyone is free (and are women really free under a misogynistic religious system that seeks to coerce them to subservience and living a role of mere material property for men?) then this will be a very different, more risky and highly complex societal system to build. Furthermore it will demand responsibility and states appear to be legislating away this particular human moral attribute! Not that there is anything against that… just that it deserves a whole treatise of its own… which we may see. However one downside is ghetto’isation, a debate that is running in the UK about how individuals may be free to undergo private education, and this requires a significant amount of “concern” and investigation about its management in a free society.
Ok, Le Sarko, is the butt of many jokes and glib rejoinders but, at the end of the day, he is the elected head of a secular state and this issue runs to the core of such a state’s journey to harmony, betterment and improvement for all of its people.

A treatise of the uniform as social engineering:
http://inscribe.iupress.org/doi/abs/10.2979/NAS.2009.-.18.125?cookieSet=1&journalCode=nas

Interesting – I hadn’t quite thought of it in those terms. Simply put, I always imagined a secular state would mean a government with no religious affiliation – but certainly not one who would be imposing it’s non-affiliation on it’s citizens. I cannot see how banning the burqa is going to help an oppressed Muslim woman in any way but superficially, if that’s the real reason for these laws – and at the same time, it’s a specific choice of target that I think is most unhelpful for community integration at large. I thought the riots in Paris a few years ago showed us the consequences of trying to ignore/whitewash over these kinds of cultural differences?

Yes, an interesting and profoundly important issue (women and religion) for debate and congratulations for raising the debate. My understanding of a secular state is one that has religion (“church”) and state totally separated one from the other; where religion plays no part in the running of the state or influences it in any form. To this extent the State is neutral and I agree it does not impose any religion or non-religion on its citizens. In contrast it would be a protector of religious, or non-religious, freedoms to the extent that they are not in conflict with the system of laws and justice in the state. However, in maintaining neutrality, one can logically argue that, especially in state or public education where people in their formative years are not capable of discerning whether religious, or non-religious, belief is appropriate for them, that all preconceptive forms of religious behaviour are not suitable in any state “system” because, by common practice, such behaviour by one religious group or another would exert political influence on those around them. In the UK there has been reaction to the banning of the wearing of crosses in some schools. In some secular states this neutrality of behaviour is taken into adult daily living. In Turkey, for instance, massively muslim by religion but created as a secular state by Ataturk, headscarves have been banned all the way upto university education level for decades. In Tunisia, a muslim state that aspires to secularisation and positive affirmation for women, the State has banned women wearing headscarves in public since 1981. States recognise that, above all in matters religious, symbolism is an important and powerful political issue. Muslim secular states appear to be more radical than “Christian” States and appear to recognise the argument that the wearing of a veil is oppressive to women!
Philosophers have postulated that states, in modernizing, progress to secularity where religion loses all influence on the state, its system of governance and justice. France is such a State which is under change and thus confronting these profound issues on a day-to-day basis given its historical affiliation with previous muslim colonies.
As to your second sentence, I interpret you to think that a State should aspire to diversity (community integration), not secularism, and it is in this sense that you see the acts of Le Sarko as being frivolous. Of course Le Sarko is guilty of turning, or spinning, a situation to common popularism by arguing a feminist tack to the issue. However, in June last year it was the fact that 60 representatives of the National Assembly called for action on the wearing of the burqa that he, only afterwards, came out in support. As a male atheist I would defer to the opinions of women who are required to wear the burqa, in States like Iran or Saudi Arabia, as to whether they consider it unhelpful for integration in their own communities or whether it oppresses them as free individuals.
I think religion is an inflammatory catalyst in culture and not surprised that, as in ages past, it leads to riot and war. But does rioting tell us the difference between right and wrong, especially in a secular state?
[From The Times 23 June 2009: “Muslim leaders reacted cautiously to Mr Sarkozy’s words on the niqab and burka. Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, called the President’s remarks “in keeping with the republican spirit of secularism”. Moderate Muslims also saw full face-covering as a symbol of submission, said Mr Boubakeur.”]